Satyendra pathak
Doha
Qatar’sstock exchange continued its weekly upward momentum as foreign institutions remained bullish throughout the trading week that concluded on Thursday.
The main index of Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) ended the current week’s trading with a rise of 0.32 percent, adding 32.390 points to its balance, thus rising to 10,130 points, compared to its closing in the past week supported by four sectors.
Market capitalisation pushed up marginally by 0.1 percent to reach QR585.8 billion (bn) from QR584.9 bn at the end of the previous trading week.
Of the 51 traded companies, 22 ended the week higher, 28 ended lower and one stood unchanged. Widam Food Company was the best performing stock for the week, rising by 6.5 percent. Meanwhile, Qatar Aluminum Manufacturing Company (Qamco) was the worst performing stock for the week, going down by 2.1 percent.
Sector-wise, banking was the best-performing sector this week, up 1.5 percent, while industrials was the worst-performing sector, down 0.980 percent.
Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), QNB Group (QNB) and Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB) were the main contributors to the weekly index gain. QIB and QNB added 26.84 and 13.65 points to the index, respectively. Further, QIIK added another 12.09 points.
Traded value during the week increased 6 percent to reach QR1,541.2 million from QR1,454.2 million in the prior trading week. QNB Group (QNBK) was the top value traded stock during the week with total traded value of QR247.7 million.
Traded volume went up 4.2 percent to 568.6mn shares compared with 545.5 million shares in the prior trading week. Baladna was the top volume traded stock during the week with total traded volume of 72.6 million shares.
The number of transactions also moved up 2.2 percent to 59,881 against 58,573 in the prior week.
Foreign institutions remained bullish, ending the week with net buying of QR58.6 million against net buying of QR106.5 million in the previous week. Qatari institutions turned bullish with net buying of QR19 million against net selling of QR40.7 million in the week before.
Foreign retail investors ended the week with net selling of QR31.1 million against net selling of QR9.6 million in the prior week. Qatari retail investors recorded net selling of QR46.5 million against net selling of QR56.2 million the week before.
According to an estimate by QNB Financial Services (QNBFS), as of today’s closing since the beginning of this global foreign institutions were net sellers by $3 million, while GCC institutions were net sellers of Qatari stocks by $285.2 million.
Commenting on the weekly performance of QSE, financial analyst Youssef Bouhlaiqa told Qatar News Agency (QNA) that he expected that the QSE would attract more liquidity in the coming period with the progress in announcing more companies’ results, noting that the profits of the listed companies that have revealed their results so far are 6.96 percent, reaching QR18.577 billion.